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Happy Is He Who Looks Only Into His Work To Know If It Will Succeed, Never Into The Times Or The Public Opinion; And Who Writes From The Love Of Imparting Certain Thoughts And Not From The Necessity Of Sale - Who Writes Always To The Unknown Friend.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Happy Is He Who

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Happy Is He Who Looks Only Into His Work To Know If It Will Succeed, Never Into The Times Or The Public Opinion; And Who Writes From The Love Of Imparting Certain Thoughts And Not From The Necessity Of Sale - Who Writes Always To The Unknown Friend.

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Every Experiment, By Multitudes Or By Individuals, That Has A Sensual And Selfish Aim, Will Fail.

Half A Man's Wisdom Goes With His Courage.

Liberty Is A Slow Fruit.

Men Are What Their Mothers Made Them.

Now Every One Must Do After His Kind, Be He Asp Or Angel, And These Must.

The Whole Value Of History, Of Biography, Is To Increase My Self-trust, By Demonstrating What Man Can Be And Do.

Thoughts Rule The World.

Law Rules Throughout Existence, A Law Which Is Not Intelligent, But Intelligence.

The Poet Knows That He Speaks Adequately, Then, Only When He Speaks Somewhat Wildly.

Language Is A City, To The Building Of Which Every Human Being Brought A Stone; Yet He Is No More To Be Credited With The Grand Result Than The Acaleph Which Adds A Cell To The Coral Reef Which Is The Basis Of The Continent.

Debt, Grinding Debt, Whose Iron Face The Widow, The Orphan, And The Sons Of Genius Fear And Hate; Debt, Which Consumes So Much Time, Which So Cripples And Disheartens A Great Spirit With Cares That Seem So Base, Is A Preceptor Whose Lessons Cannot Be Foregone, And Is Needed Most By Those Who Suffer From It Most.

I Hear Therefore With Joy Whatever Is Beginning To Be Said Of The Dignity And Necessity Of Labor To Every Citizen. There Is Virtue Yet In The Hoe And The Spade, For Learned As Well As For Unlearned Hands. And Labor Is Everywhere Welcome; Always We Are Invited To Work; Only Be This Limitation Observed, That A Man Shall Not For The Sake Of Wider Activity Sacrifice Any Opinion To The Popular Judgments And Modes Of Action.

The Only True Gifts Are A Portion Of Yourself.

Let Us Stun And Astonish The Intruding Rabble Of Men And Books And Institutions By A Simple Declaration Of The Divine Fact. Bid The Invaders Take The Shoes From Off Their Feet, For God Is Here Within.

Up And Away For Life! Be Fleet!- The Frost-king Ties My Fumbling Feet, Sings In My Ears, My Hands Are Stones, Curdles The Blood To The Marble Bones, Tugs At The Heart-strings, Numbs The Sense, And Hems In Life With Narrowing Fence. Well, In This Broad Bed Lie And Sleep,- The Punctual Stars Will Vigil Keep,- Embalmed By Purifying Cold; The Winds Shall Sing Their Dead-march Old, The Snow Is No Ignoble Shroud, The Moon Thy Mourner, And The Cloud.

Man Is Timid And Apologetic; He Is No Longer Upright; He Dares Not Say "i Think," "i Am," But Quotes Some Saint Or Sage.

Solitude Is Impractical, And Society Fatal. We Must Keep Our Head In The One And Our Hands In The Other. The Conditions Are Met, If We Keep Our Independence, Yet Do Not Lose Our Sympathy.

Cultivate An Attitude Of Gratitude, Of Giving And Forgiving. Nothing Can Bring You Peace But Yourself.

We May Like Well To Know What Is Plato’s And What Is Montesquieu’s Or Goethe’s Part, And What Thought Was Always Dear To The Writer Himself; But The Worth Of The Sentences Consists In Their Radiancy And Equal Aptitude To All Intelligence. They Fit All Our Facts Like A Charm. We Respect Ourselves The More That We Know Them.

Cannot We Let [children] Be Themselves, And Enjoy Life In Their Own Way? You Are Trying To Make Another You. One's Enough.

Doing Well Is The Result Of Doing Good. That's What Capitalism Is All About.

If You Have Something To Say, You Will Be Given The Power To Say It.

Man Exists For His Own Sake And Not To Add A Laborer To The State.

All Diseases Run Into One, Old Age.

Funny Relationship

Whom God Has Put Asunder, Why Should Man Put Together?

One Man's Justice Is Another's Injustice; One Man's Beauty Another's Ugliness; One Man's Wisdom Anpther's Folly.

As Sunbeams Stream Through Liberal Space And Nothing Jostle Or Displace, So Waved The Pine-tree Through My Thought And Fanned The Dreams It Never Brought.

Character Is Higher Than Intellect. Thinking Is The Function; Living Is The Functionary.

He Thought It Happier To Be Dead, To Die For Beauty, Than Live For Bread

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, Are The Beadles And Guardsmen That Hold Us To Common Sense.

Black Men Built The Railroads, Not Blue Eyes.

Next To The Originator Of A Good Sentence Is The First Quoter Of It.

The Masters Painted For Joy, And Knew Not That Virtue Had Gone Out Of Them. They Could Not Paint The Like In Cold Blood. The Masters Of English Lyric Wrote Their Songs So. It Was A Fine Efflorescence Of Fine Powers.

The Eloquence Of One Stimulates All The Rest, Some Up To The Speaking-point, And All Others To A Degree That Makes Them Good Receivers And Conductors, And They Avenge Themselves For Their Enforced Silence By Increased Loquacity On Their Return.

Tis The Good Reader That Makes The Good Book.

Eyes...they Speak All Languages.

People Disparage Knowing And The Intellectual Life, And Urge Doing. I Am Content With Knowing, If Only I Could Know.

No Love Can Be Bound By Oath Or Covenant To Secure It Against A Higher Love.

We Pass For What We Are. Character Teaches Above Our Wills. Men Imagine That They Communicate Thier Virtue Or Vice By Overt Actions, And Do Not See That Virtue Or Vice Emit A Breath Ever Moment....one Tendency Unites Them All. The Voyage Of The Best Ship Is A Zsig Zag Line Of A Hundred Tacks. See The Line From A Sufficent Distance And It Straightens Itslef To The Average Tendency.

We Are Born Believing. A Man Bears Beliefs As A Tree Bears Apples.

Every Man Is A Consumer, And Ought To Be A Producer. He Is By Constitution Expensive, And Needs To Be Rich.

I Honor Health As The First Muse.

An Action Is The Perfection And Publication Of Thought.

If You Would Know What Nobody Knows, Read What Everybody Reads, Just One Year Afterwards.

We Must Be Lovers, And At Once The Impossible Becomes Possible.

Impossible Becomes Possible

The Religion That Is Afraid Of Science Dishonors God And Commits Suicide.

We Are Shut Up In School And College Recitation Rooms For Ten To Fifteen Years, And Come Out At Last With A Bellyful Of Words And Do Not Know A Thing. We Cannot Use Our Hands, Or Our Legs, Or Our Eyes, Or Our Arms. We Do Not Know An Edible Root In The Woods. We Cannot Tell Our Course By The Stars, Nor The Hour Of Day By The Sun. It Is Well If We Can Swim And Skate. We Are Afraid Of A Horse Or A Cow, Of A Dog, Of A Cat, Of A Spider. Far Better Was The Roman Rule To Teach A Boy Nothing That He Could Not Learn Standing.

But, If We Explore The Literature Of Heroism, We Shall Quickly Come To Plutarch, Who Is Its Doctor And Historian. To Him We Owe The Brasidas, The Dion, The Epaminodas, The Scipio Of Old, And I Must Think We Are More Deeply Indebted To Him Than To All The Ancient Writers. Each Of His "lives" Is A Refutation To The Despondency And Cowardice Of Our Religious And Political Theorists. A Wild Courage, A Stoicism Not Of The Schools, But Of The Blood, Shines In Every Anecdote, And Had Given That Book Immense Fame.

To Believe In Luck, If It Were Not A Solecism So To Use The Word Believe, Is Skepticism.

We Must Be Very Suspicious Of The Deceptions Of The Element Of Time. It Takes A Good Deal Of Time To Eat Or To Sleep, Or To Earn Ahundred Dollars, And A Very Little Time To Entertain A Hope And An Insight Which Becomes The Light Of Our Life.

Goodness That Preaches Undoes Itself.

Love Not The Flower They Pluck And Know It Not, And All Their Botany Is Latin Names.

A Man Should Have A Farm Or A Mechanical Craft For His Culture. We Must Have A Basis For Our Higher Accomplishments, Our Delicate Entertainments Of Poetry And Philosophy, In The Work Of Our Hands.

There Is No One Who Does Not Exaggerate!

Exaggeration Is

When We Can't Piece Together The Puzzle Of Our Own Lives, Remember The Best View Of A Puzzle Is From Above. Let Him Help Put You Together.

People Suffer All Their Life Long, Under The Foolish Superstition That They Can Be Cheated. But It Is Impossible For A Person To Be Cheated By Anyone But Himself.

Sitting Back In The Evening, Stargazing And Stroking Your Dog, Is An Infallible Remedy.

A Painter Told Me That Nobody Could Draw A Tree Without In Some Sort Becoming A Tree.

What We Do Not Call Education Is More Precious Than That Which We Call So. We Form No Guess, At The Time Of Receiving A Thought, Of Its Comparative Value. And Education Often Wastes Its Effort In Attempts To Thwart And Balk This Natural Magnetism, Which Is Sure To Select What Belongs To It.

Solitude Is Naught And Society Is Naught. Alternate Them And The Good Of Each Is Seen.

As Long As Any Man Exists, There Is Some Need Of Him.

Whenever You Are Sincerely Pleased You Are Nourished.

Nature Has Her Own Best Mode Of Doing Each Thing, And She Has Somewhere Told It Plainly, If We Will Keep Our Eyes And Ears Open. If Not, She Will Not Be Slow In Undeceiving Us, When We Prefer Our Own Way To Hers.

Give Me Health And A Day, And I Will Make The Pomp Of Emperors Ridiculous.

Tart, Cathartic Virtue.

The Preamble Of Thought, The Transition Through Which It Passes From The Unconscious To The Conscious, Is Action. Only So Much Do I Know, As I Have Lived. Instantly We Know Whose Words Are Loaded With Life, And Whose Not.

Sculpture And Painting Have The Effect Of Teaching Us Manners And Abolishing Hurry.

I Am A Part And Parcel Of God.

Conversation Is Our Account Of Ourselves...conversation Is The Vent Of Character As Well As Thoughts...it Is The Laboratory Of The Student.

The Desire Of Gold Is Not For Gold. It Is Not The Love Of Much Wheat, And Wool And Household Stuff. It Is The Means Of Freedom And Benefit.

Do Not Be Too Timid And Squeamish About Your Actions. All Life Is An Experiment. The More Experiments You Make The Better. What If They Are A Little Coarse And You May Get Your Coat Soiled Or Torn? What If You Do Fail, And Get Fairly Rolled In The Dirt Once Or Twice? Up Again, You Shall Never Be So Afraid Of A Tumble.

But Your Isolation Must Not Be Mechanical, But Spiritual, That Is, Must Be Elevation.

That Which Shows God In Me, Fortifies Me. That Which Shows God Out Of Me, Makes Me A Wart And A Wen.

Positive Atheism

Sport Is The Bloom And Glow Of A Perfect Health. The Great Will Not Condescend To Take Anything Seriously; All Must Be As Gay As The Song Of A Canary, Though It Were The Building Of Cities, Or The Eradication Of Old And Foolish Churches And Nations, Which Have Cumbered The Earth Long Thousands Of Years.

Wait, And Thy Soul Shall Speak.

Stand Guard At The Portal Of Your Mind.

If We Meet No Gods, It Is Because We Harbor None.

Every Action Has An Ancestor Of A Thought.

Outside Among Your Fellows, Among Strangers, You Must Preserve Appearances, A Hundred Things You Cannot Do; But Inside, The Terrible Freedom.

A Person's Life Is Limited But Serving The People Is Limitless. I Want To Devote My Limited Life To Serving The People Limitlessly.

Great Works Of Art Have No More Affecting Lesson For Us Than This. They Teach Us To Abide By Our Own Spontaneous Expression With Good Humored Inflexibility Whether The Whole Cry Of Voices Is On The Other Side.

Instead Of Feeling A Poverty When We Encounter A Great Man, Let Us Treat The New Comer Like A Travelling Geologist, Who Passes Through Our Estate, And Shows Us Good Slate, Or Limestone, Or Anthracite, In Our Brush Pasture.

I Am The Lover Of Uncontained And Immortal Beauty. In The Wilderness, I Find Something More Dear And Connate Than In Streets Or Villages. In The Tranquil Landscape, And Especially In The Distant Line Of The Horizon, Man Beholds Somewhat As Beautiful As His Own Nature.

Science Finds It Methods.

The Use Of Natural History Is To Give Us Aid In Supernatural History: The Use Of The Outer Creation, To Give Us Language For The Beings And Changes Of The Inward Creation.

I Give You Joy Of Your Free And Brave Thought. I Have Great Joy In It. I Find Incomparable Things Said Incomparably Well, As They Must Be. I Find The Courage Of Treatment Which So Delights Us, And Which Large Perception Only Can Inspire.

The Secret Of Fortune Is Joy In Our Hands.

So . . . I Feel In Regard To This Aged England . . . Pressed Upon By Transitions Of Trade And . . . Competing Populations,-i See Her Not Dispirited, Not Weak, But Well Remembering That She Has Seen Dark Days Before;-indeed, With A Kind Of Instinct That She Sees A Little Better In A Cloudy Day, And That, In Storm Of Battle And Calamity, She Has A Secret Vigor And A Pulse Like A Cannon.

The Wise Know That Foolish Legislation Is A Rope Of Sand, Which Perishes In The Twisting.

Pain Is Superficial, And Therefore Fear Is. The Torments Of Martyrdoms Are Probably Most Keenly Felt By The By-standers.

Ethics And Religion Differ Herein; That The One Is The System Of Human Duties Commencing From Man; The Other, From God. Religion Includes The Personality Of God; Ethics Does Not.

There Is A Time In Every Man's Education When He Arrives At The Conviction That Envy Is Ignorance; That Imitation Is Suicide.

There Are Dull And Bright, Sacred And Profane, Coarse And Fine Egotists. It Is A Disease That, Like Influenza, Falls On All Constitutions. In The Distemper Known To Physicians As Chorea, The Patient Sometimes Turns Round, And Continues To Spin Slowly In One Spot. Is Egotism A Metaphysical Varioloid Of This Malady?

Wherever There Is Power, There Is Age. Don't Be Deceived By Dimples And Curls. I Tell You That Babe Is A Thousand Years Old.

Only To Youth Will Spring Be Spring.

Imagination Is A Very High Sort Of Seeing, Which Does Not Come By Study, But By The Intellect Being Where And What It Sees, By Sharing The Path, Or Circuits Of Things Through Forms, And So Making Them Translucid To Others.

For You, O Broker, There Is No Other Principle But Arithmetic. For Me, Commerce Is Of Trivial Import; Love, Faith, Truth Of Character, The Aspiration Of Man, These Are Sacred; Nor Can I Detach One Duty, Like You, From All Other Duties, And Concentrate My Forces Mechanically On The Payment Of Moneys.

You Must Pay For Conformity. All Goes Well As Long As You Run With Conformists. But You, Who Are Honest Men In Other Particulars, Know That There Is Alive Somewhere A Man Whose Honesty Reaches To This Point Also, That He Shall Not Kneel To False Gods, And, On The Day When You Meet Him, You Sink Into The Class Of Counterfeits.

Sleep Is Not, Death Is Not; Who Seem To Die Live. House You Were Born In, Friends Of Your Spring-time, Old Man And Young Maid, Day's Toil And It's Guerdon, They Are All Vanishing, Fleeing To Fables, Cannot Be Moored

Hidden Away In The Inner Nature Of The Real Man Is The Law Of His Life, And Someday He Will Discover It And Consciously Make Use Of It. He Will Heal Himself, Make Himself Happy And Prosperous, And Life In An Entirely Different World. For He Will Have Discovered That Life Is From Within And Not From Without.

Man Was Born To Be Rich, Or To Inevitably Grow Rich, By The Use Of His Faculties: By The Union Of Thought With Nature.

Nature Is A Rag Merchant, Who Works Up Every Shred And Ort And End Into New Creations.

Fame Is Proof That The People Are Gullible.

My Life Should Be Unique; It Should Be An Alms, A Battle, A Conquest, A Medicine.

There Are Men Whose Manners Have The Same Essential Splendor As The Simple And Awful Sculpture On The Friezes Of The Parthenon, And The Remains Of The Earliest Greek Art.

Cities Give Not The Human Senses Room Enough. We Go Out Daily And Nightly To Feed The Eyes On The Horizon, And Require So Much Scope, Just As We Need Water For Our Bath.

Blame Is Safer Than Praise

The Horseman Serves The Horse, The Neat-herd Serves The Neat, The Merchant Serves The Purse, The Eater Serves His Meat; 'tis The Day Of The Chattel, Web To Weave, And Corn To Grind, Things Are In The Saddle, And Ride Mankind.

When I Read A Good Book, I Wish My Life Were Three Thousand Years Long.

The Finest People Marry The Two Sexes In Their Own Person.

To The Body And Mind Which Have Been Cramped By Noxious Work Or Company, Nature Is Medicinal And Restores Their Tone.

If Thou Fill Thy Brain With Boston And New York, With Fashion And Covetousness, And Wilt Stimulate Thy Jaded Senses With Wine And French Coffee, Thou Shalt Find No Radiance Of Wisdom In The Lonely Waste Of The Pinewoods.

A Man Should Not Go Where He Cannot Carry His Whole Sphere Or Society With Him,mnot Bodily, The Whole Circle Of His Friends, But Atmospherically. He Should Preserve In A New Company The Same Attitude Of Mind And Reality Of Relation, Which His Daily Associates Draw Him To, Else He Is Shorn Of His Best Beams, And Will Be An Orphan In The Merriest Club.

Few People Have Any Next, They Live From Hand To Mouth Without A Plan, And Are Always At The End Of Their Line.

God Will Not Have His Work Made Manifest By Cowards

Who Gave Thee, O Beauty, The Keys Of This Breast,-- Too Credulous Lover Of Blest And Unblest? Say, When In Lapsed Ages Thee Knew I Of Old? Or What Was The Service For Which I Was Sold?

Fate Is Unpenetrated Causes.

When There Is No Vision, People Perish.

A Friend May Be Nature's Most Magnificent Creation.

Man Is A Stream Whose Source Is Hidden. Our Being Is Descending Into Us From We Know Not Whence. The Most Exact Calculator Has Noprescience That Somewhat Incalculable May Not Balk The Very Next Moment. I Am Constrained Every Moment To Acknowledge A Higher Origin For Events Than The Will I Call Mine.

Power Is What They Want, Not Candy-power To Execute Their Design, Power To Give Legs And Feet, Form And Actuality To Their Thought; Which, To A Clear-sighted Man, Appears The End For Which The Universe Exists, And All Its Resources Might Be Well Applied.

Tis The Privilege Of Art Thus To Play Its Cheerful Part, Man On Earth To Acclimate And Bend The Exile To His Fate.

Our Friendships Hurry To Short And Poor Conclusions, Because We Have Made Them A Texture Of Wine And Dreams, Instead Of The Toughfibre Of The Human Heart. The Laws Of Friendship Are Austere And Eternal, Of One Web With The Laws Of Nature And Of Morals.

...as There Is No Screen Or Ceiling Between Our Heads And The Infinite Heavens, So Is There No Bar Or Wall In The Soul Where Man, The Effect, Ceases, And God, The Cause, Begins. The Walls Are Taken Away. We Lie Open On One Side To The Deeps Of Spiritual Nature, To The Attributes Of God. Justice We See And Know, Love, Freedom, Power. These Natures No Man Ever Got Above, But They Tower Over Us, And Most In The Moment When Our Interests Tempt Us To Wound Them.

What Goes On Around You... Compares Little With What Goes On Inside You.

Whoso Would Be A Man Must Be A Nonconformist.

Being Different

I Hate This Shallow Americanism Which Hopes To Get Rich By Credit, To Get Knowledge By Raps On Midnight Tables, To Learn The Economy Of The Mind By Phrenology, Or Skill Without Study, Or Mastery Without Apprenticeship.

Only That Mind Draws Me Which I Cannot Read.

Slavery Is No Scholar, No Improver; It Does Not Love The Whistle Of The Railroad; It Does Not Love The Newspaper, The Mailbag, A College, A Book Or A Preacher Who Has The Absurd Whim Of Saying What He Thinks; It Does Not Increase The White Population; It Does Not Improve The Soil; Everything Goes To Decay.

We Read Often With As Much Talent As We Write.

We Are Taught By Great Actions That The Universe Is The Property Of Every Individual In It.

Conformity Is The Ape Of Harmony.

It Is Curious That Christianity, Which Is Idealism, Is Sturdily Defended By The Brokers, And Steadily Attacked By The Idealists.

He In Whom The Love Of Repose Predominates Will Accept The First Creed, The First Philosophy, The First Political Party He Meets — Most Likely His Father's. He Gets Rest, Commodity, And Reputation; But He Shuts The Door Of Truth.

A Man Is Usually More Careful Of His Money Than He Is Of His Principles.

Every Spirit Makes Its House, And We Can Give A Shrewd Guess From The House To The Inhabitant.

I Knew A Witty Physician Who Found Theology In The Biliary Duct, And Used To Affirm That If There Was A Disease In The Liver, The Man Became A Calvinist, And If That Organ Was Sound, He Became A Unitarian.

All Is A Riddle, And The Key To A Riddle...is Another Riddle.

God Will Not Make Himself Manifest To Cowards

You Are Constantly Invited To Be What You Are.

The Person Who Screams, Or Uses The Superlative Degree, Or Converses With Heat Puts Whole Drawing-rooms To Flight. If You Wish To Be Loved, Love Measure.

Flowers Are The Earth Laughing.

A Lady With Whom I Was Riding In The Forest Said To Me That The Woods Always Seemed To Her To Wait, As If The Genii Who Inhabit Them Suspend Their Deeds Until The Wayfarer Had Passed Onward; A Thought Which Poetry Has Celebrated In The Dance Of The Fairies, Which Breaks Off On The Approach Of Human Feet.

General Ideas Are Essences. They Are Our Gods: They Round And Ennoble The Most Partial And Sordid Way Of Living.

The Silence That Accepts Merit As The Most Natural Thing In The World Is The Highest Applause.

Plato Says That The Punishment Which The Wise Suffer Who Refuse To Take Part In The Government, Is, To Live Under The Government Of Worse Men; And The Like Regret Is Suggested To All The Auditors, As The Penalty Of Abstaining To Speak,--that They Shall Hear Worse Orators Than Themselves.

That Is Ever The Difference Between The Wise And The Unwise: The Latter Wonders At What Is Unusual; The Wise Man Wonders At The Usual.

Let Us Advance On Chaos And The Dark

I Cannot Often Enough Say, That A Man Is Only A Relative And Representative Nature. Each Is A Hint Of The Truth, But Far Enough From Being That Truth, Which Yet He Quite Newly And Inevitably Suggests To Us. If I Seek It In Him, I Shall Not Find It.

Although This Garrulity Of Advising Is Born With Us, I Confess That Life Is Rather A Subject Of Wonder, Than Of Didactics. So Muchfate, So Much Irresistible Dictation From Temperament And Unknown Inspiration Enter Into It, That We Doubt We Can Say Anything Out Of Our Own Experience Whereby To Help Each Other.

Manners Require Time, And Nothing Is More Vulgar Than Haste.

Nature Always Wears The Colors Of The Spirit. To A Man Laboring Under Calamity, The Heat Of His Own Fire Hath Sadness In It.

When The Man Is At Home, His Standing In Society Is Well Known And Quietly Taken; But When He Is Abroad, It Is Problematical, And Is Dependent On The Success Of His Manners.

Each Man Too Is A Tyrant In Tendency, Because He Would Impose His Idea On Others; And Their Trick Is Their Natural Defence. Jesuswould Absorb The Race; But Tom Paine Or The Coarsest Blasphemer Helps Humanity By Resisting This Exuberance Of Power.

If You Criticize A Fine Genius, The Odds Are That You Are Out Of Your Reckoning, And, Instead Of The Poet, Are Censuring Your Owncaricature Of Him.

The Human Body Is A Magazine Of Inventions, The Patent Office, Where Are The Models From Which Every Hint Is Taken. All The Tools And Engines On Earth Are Only Extensions Of Its Limbs And Senses.

Have Mountains, And Waves, And Skies, No Significance But What We Consciously Give Them, When We Employ Them As Emblems Of Our Thoughts?

No Nation Has Produced Anything Like His Equal. There Is No Quality In The Human Mind, There Is No Class Of Topics, There Is No Region Of Thought, In Which He Has Not Soared Or Descended, And None In Which He Has Not Said The Commanding Word.

The Etymologist Finds The Deadest Word To Have Been Once A Brilliant Picture. Language Is Fossil Poetry. As The Limestone Of The Continent Consists Of Infinite Masses Of The Shells Of Animalcules, So Language Is Made Up Of Images Or Tropes, Which Now, In Their Secondary Use, Have Long Ceased To Remind Us Of Their Poetic Origin.

We Sometimes Meet An Original Gentleman, Who, If Manners Had Not Existed, Would Have Invented Them.

The Highest Virtue Is Always Against The Law.

Let The Soul Be Assured That Somewhere In The Universe It Should Rejoin Its Friend, And It Would Be Content And Cheerful Alone For A Thousand Years.

What Art Can Paint Or Gild Any Object In After Life With The Glow Which Nature Gives To The First Baubles Of Childhood? St. Peter's Cannot Have The Magical Power Over Us That The Red And Gold Covers Of Our First Picture-book Possessed.

The Mind Does Not Create What It Perceives, Any More Than The Eye Creates The Rose.

The Service A Man Renders His Friend Is Trivial And Selfish, Compared With The Service He Knows His Friend Stood In Readiness To Yield Him, Alike Before He Had Begun To Serve His Friend, And Now Also. Compared With That Good-will I Bear My Friend, The Benefit It Is In My Power To Render Him Seems Small.

There Is A Mortifying Experience In Particular, Which Does Not Fail To Wreak Itself Also In The General History; I Mean "the Foolish Face Of Praise," The Forced Smile Which We Put On In Company Where We Do Not Feel At Ease, In Answer To Conversation Which Does Not Interest Us. The Muscles, Not Spontaneously Moved But Moved, By A Low Usurping Wilfulness, Grow Tight About The Outline Of The Face, With The Most Disagreeable Sensation.

Raphael Paints Wisdom, Handel Sings It, Phidias Carves It, Shakespeare Writes It, Wren Builds It, Columbus Sails It, Luther Preaches It, Washington Arms It, Watt Mechanizes It.

Our Age Is Very Cheap And Intelligible. Unroof Any House, And You Shall Find It. The Well-being Consists In Having A Sufficiency Of Coffee And Toast, With A Daily Newspaper; A Well Glazed Parlor, With Marbles, Mirrors And Centre-table; And The Excitement Of A Few Parties And A Few Rides In A Year.

The Intellect Searches Out The Absolute Order Of Things As They Stand In The Mind Of God, And Without The Colors Of Affection. The Intellectual And The Active Powers Seem To Succeed Each Other, And The Exclusive Activity Of The One Generates The Exclusive Activity Of The Other. There Is Something Unfriendly In Each To The Other, But They Are Like The Alternate Periods Of Feeding And Working In Animals; Each Prepares And Will Be Followed By The Other.

The Field Cannot Be Well Seen From Within The Field. The Astronomer Must Have His Diameter Of The Earth's Orbit As A Base To Fix The Parallax Of Any Other Star

What You Do Speaks So Loud That I Cannot Hear What You Say.

Manners Are Very Communicable: Men Catch Them From Each Other.

Wherever There Is Failure, There Is Some Giddiness, Some Superstition About Luck, Some Step Omitted, Which, Nature Never Pardons.

The Gentleman Is A Man Of Truth, Lord Of His Own Actions, And Expressing That Lordship In His Behavior, Not In Any Manner Dependent And Servile Either On Persons, Or Opinions, Or Possessions.

We Don't Grow Old. When We Cease To Grow, We Become Old.

A Man's Style Is His Mind's Voice. Wooden Minds, Wooden Voices.

We Do Not Yet Possess Ourselves, And We Know At The Same Time That We Are Much More.

Men Who Know The Same Things Are Not Long The Best Company For Each Other.

Self-command Is The Main Elegance.

Cause And Effect Are Two Sides Of One Fact.

I Could Better Eat With One Who Did Not Respect The Truth Or The Laws, Than With A Sloven And Unpresentable Person. Moral Qualities Rule The World, But At Shorter Distances, The Senses Are Despotic.

Let Not The Emphasis Of Hospitality Lie In Bed And Board; But Let Truth And Love And Honor And Courtesy Flow In All Thy Deeds.

Do You Want To Be A Power In The World? Then Be Yourself. Be True To The Highest Within Your Soul And Then Allow Yourself To Be Governed By No Customs Or Conventionaliti Es Or Arbitrary Man-made Rules That Are Not Founded On Principle.

The Martyr Cannot Be Dishonored. Every Lash Inflicted Is A Tongue Of Fame; Every Prison A More Illustrious Abode.

Keep Your Friendships In Repair.

Most Of The Great Results Of History Are Brought About By Discreditable Means.

The Effect Of The Indulgence Of Human Affection Is A Certain Cordial Exhilaration.

Our Thinking Is A Pious Reception.

Chiefly The Sea-shore Has Been The Point Of Departure To Knowledge, As To Commerce. The Most Advanced Nations Are Always Those Who Navigate The Most.

A Man Makes Inferiors His Superiors By Heat; Self Control Is The Rule. Anger Is An Uncontrollable Feeling That Betrays What You Are When You Are Not Yourself. Anger Is That Powerful Internal Force That Blows Out The Light Of Reason. Know This To Be The Enemy: It Is Anger, Born Of Desire.

Milton Says, That The Lyric Poet May Drink Wine And Live Generously, But The Epic Poet, He Who Shall Sing Of The Gods, And Their Descent Unto Men, Must Drink Water Out Of A Wooden Bowl. For Poetry Is Not "devil's Wine," But God's Wine.

But Only That Soul Can Be My Friend Which I Encounter On The Line Of My Own March, That Soul To Which I Do Not Decline, And Which Does Not Decline Me, But, Native Of The Same Celestial Latitude, Repeats In Its Own All My Experience.

A Man In The View Of Absolute Goodness, Adores, With Total Humility. Every Step Downward, Is A Step Upward. The Man Who Renounceshimself, Comes To Himself.

Prayer That Craves A Particular Commodity, Anything Less Than All Good, Is Vicious.

The Intellectual Life May Be Kept Clean And Healthful, If Man Will Live The Life Of Nature, And Not Import Into His Mind Difficulties Which Are None Of His.

The Only Method To Possess A Buddy Is Always To Be One.

Art Is Evidence Of Our Most Creative Moment.

Men Grind And Grind In The Mill Of A Truism, And Nothing Comes Out But What Was Put In. But The Moment They Desert The Tradition For A Spontaneous Thought, Then Poetry, Wit, Hope, Virtue, Learning, Anecdote, And All Flock To Their Aid.

A Scholar Does Not Wish To Be Always Pumping His Brains; He Wants Gossips.

Eloquence Must Be Grounded On The Plainest Narrative. Afterwards, It May Warm Itself Until It Exhales Symbols Of Every Kind And Color, Speaks Only Through The Most Poetic Forms; But First And Last, It Must Still Be At Bottom A Biblical Statement Of Fact.

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Ferdinand De Saussure

Ricardo Montalban

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